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Memories of My Childhood as a Girl

When I was five years old, I went to a preschool called Kinderfarm. It was in an old farmhouse east of town, with goats, chickens, bunnies. Lots of kids my age. I was a bit of a solitary child. I tended to play by myself. Coloring, playing with toy cars, dolls, action figures, digging in the sandbox while talking to myself.

One rainy day, while sitting on top of the indoor playground in the big room, a boy came up to me wearing a Denver Broncos football shirt. He really wanted to talk to me. Like, he needed to talk to me. I was low-key ignoring him, but he wanted to know what sports teams I liked. I didn’t know any sports teams. He said, “OK, what do you like to do?” I said I liked to go camping. I started telling him about the nice lady park ranger I met that summer, camping with my family in Arizona. How she told us stories …

“OH THE RANGERS! I like them!” And he proceeded to talk at me about baseball. He was very upset when it became clear I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about. After a while, I realized that he was talking, yet again, about sportsball. I remember thinking something along the lines of, “What is going on with this creature? He seems totally alien. Why is he not understanding what I’m saying to him? Why is he obsessed with sports? Can’t he talk about painting and nature like a normal person?” Well, that, but in 5-year-old.

That is the first time I remember seeing strongly gendered behavior that absolutely baffled me. It is the first time I remember someone making a strong assumption about my likes, desires, interests, and knowledge, based solely on what I looked like. Over the years, there would be many more instances of this kind of thing, but each one was more subtle and nuanced, masked by the increasing knowledge of who the world expected me to be. With each such interaction, I got better at bullshitting.

“Haha! Of course I don’t want to try on that dress, that’s silly!”

“Haha!” Of course purple and pink are not my favorite colors!”

“Haha! Of course I don’t want to put on the rest of this makeup after putting on that mascara. That was just a joke! Haha that’s gay!”

“Haha! Of course I am not absolutely fucking mortified at watching “The Birdcage” with my family and being envious of the queens!”

“Haha! Of course that woman I fantasize about while having sex is who I’m imagining fucking, there’s no way that that woman is me and I’m fantasizing about being fucked, as her!”

Now tell me, what exactly is a “Nugget” and which type of ball are they concerned with?

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You Have 30 Days To Buy a Subaru Or Risk Being Able to Find Your Car In a Parking Lot

The weather is like it was the summer we moved here
Not really summer
I tell her

I say to the ghost of her in my bedroom
Truthfully
Wet and cold
Green and lush

The west opens before us
Jill driving our BMW at 100 miles an hour
Out of Nebraska
Welcome to Colorful Colorado

Eight years ago
Most of our marriage
We break into our own house
Celebrate the crime with Illegal Pete’s

I wait for the train on the Sixteenth Street Mall
Wondering if this will be a good life for us
Staring into a future
It looks back with tears in its eyes

Summer begins
Not really summer
I tell her
Without you

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A Journal Entry

I remember thinking, back when my voice was changing, “you are going to have to have a lot of surgeries if you want to fix all the stuff that’s about to go wrong with you.” I remember feeling my skull/jaw/back of my head as they changed shape throughout puberty and into college, feeling increasingly sad as I could feel the bumps and change in size of various protuberances.

And, sure enough, yes, I have had to (and will continue to have to, for a while) have a lot of surgeries. I never imagined that I could actually do what I’ve done. I thought it would be impossible. It turns out that it was “only” very, very, very hard.

On top of everything else, yesterday, I was coming back from a post-op at Denver Health for my revision bottom surgery, and someone pulled out in front of me in traffic and I slammed into the side of their truck. I had the right of way.

My brand new (a month old, exactly) bright red, beautiful, 2023 Toyota Crown Platinum Hybrid Max turned its dashboard red and told me it was emergency braking before I even knew what was happening. Klaxons started to sound in the car. I hit the brake but discovered it was already at the bottom of its travel, ABS pulsing furiously. I remember seeing the side of the black truck approaching fast. I was going maybe 30 or 35 MPH. The pyrotechnic hood ejectors on the hinges fired and the hood rocketed itself into a position so that it could cushion the potential impact of a pedestrian, the seatbelt pretensioned itself and as I heard the crunch-thud of the impact, it started to ease out the tension as the airbags (steering wheel and knee) fired. I was dazed. The car filled with gunpowder smell from the airbag deployment. I remember blinking, seeing bright white midday light filtering through millions of little particles of rocket propellant and fiberglass in the air (fabric shreds from the airbag) seeing the asian characters printed in diffuse, hardly readable, red, stamped on the white fabric of the airbag, slightly dingy from soot. Feeling remarkably uninjured, surprisingly uninjured, and then looking down at my wrists and seeing bright red welts raising. Thinking, “huh, I wonder what caused that? Oh, right, the airbag. I hope my boobs are ok” Immediately worried about my breast implants. The car klaxoning warnings very loudly both inside and outside the vehicle. Toyota telematics emergency person on the line. My watch dinging from Megan and Jill responding almost immediately to emergency alerts generated by the impact detectors in my Apple Watch. Me telling the telematics person my name. Them misgendering me repeatedly. In my dazed state, saying, “I’m not a sir, I’m a m’aam!” Getting misgendered again, even after telling the person that my name is Nicole Roy. Telling them, “please, my name is Nicole and I’m a transgender woman, PLEASE call me ‘ma’am’!” And the person apologizing, and then continuing to misgender me because of my voice.

It is amazing, the sci-fi, artificial intelligence, miracles of safety in modern cars. I wish I had not had to find out how amazing they are, first-hand, but I’m grateful for them.

The Denver Police Department 911 dispatcher, and all of the fire/EMT/police on the scene *all* immediately and without asking or prompting, correctly gendered me the *entire time*. Thank you, city and county of Denver.

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Talisman 🦋

The Blue Morpho butterfly is very special to me. It has become my symbol of transition and healing, partly due to its presence in the emoji lexicon. I use it on social media posts to denote transition progress and joy. I have always found its iridescence beautiful, as beautiful as I wanted to be, as I knew I could be, as I knew I was.

You can see the pain in how I presented myself to the world before I transitioned. Always in black, head-to-toe, with some dashes of brightness in my shoes and my sunglasses. They were the only iridescence I would allow the world to see from day to day.

Until, one day, I allowed myself to dream, and then quite a while later, after much soul searching and resignation, allowed that dream to become reality. I went into a cocoon of transition in the fall of 2020, and inside that cocoon, I liquefied in order to resolidify some time later as Nicole.

My outfits became colorful, vibrant, full of life. Today, I went to the Denver Botanic Garden to bask in the warmth, wet greenness, and wonderful smells of the rainforest. A treasure for the people of Denver on York Street.

I love the colors, the life, the beauty. I allow myself luxuries I did not, before. The joy of an orchid.

It’s important for human beings to create symbols for themselves, objects and ideas which guide the course of their life, and act as reminders of hope in the dark times. In the gift shop, on the way out of the gardens, I saw a framed set of Blue Morphos. I have wanted this set for years. I didn’t know why, before. Now I do.

So, I bought myself a gift.

The Morphos are a Talisman for me, a symbol of life, hope, joy in the brief time we have to emblazon ourselves with iridescence on the memories of those around us. Let me fly for a brief time under the sun, my wings shimmering with blue, aquamarine and flecks of violet. That is what I want.

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Manifest

Let me feel the breadth and depth of life
Seeing the path laid before me by my own spirit
Unafraid of the darkness
The moon glittering on the hills and streams

Let me yearn for freedom but not power
Awake in the days when life proves my worth
A scent of sweet pea blossoms glowing in the evening
Smoke rolling in from distant mountain fires

Let me be settled in a time and place of my choosing
A home full of love and joy
A garden of sunlight to bask in
Passion cooking on the stove, a hug and a kiss the fountain of days to come

Let me breathe life into others and they into me
Listening to their stories and joining their path for a time
Divergence becoming a gift, knowing we may never see one another again
Taking their stories with me and spreading them like seeds

Let me cast spells into the lake of time
A rose in my right hand
The iridule of a mussel shell between thumb and forefinger
Intent of my heart to wind a cosmic spring

Let me cast forth my power into the night of the universe
Unearthed and desolate
A span of iron forged in the cores of ten billion suns
Harmonic foam scintillating with the radiation of me

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End

She came out in the summer of 2020, when it was no longer bearable to remain submerged in fake masculinity. She had grown unimaginably tired of the ever-increasing levels of effort it took to maintain that façade. To look at herself in the bathroom mirror in the morning and try not to cry at the sight of stubble and receding hairline, broad shoulders and square jaw.

So, bit by bit, she told her wife, her friends, her family and her colleagues. And then she changed her name.

The next summer, she and her wife got Blizzards at the Dairy Queen on Arapahoe Road, on a warm summer night. They feasted in the red smoky haze of the forest-fire twilight overlooking the city center from fifteen miles south. And then she saw it: A pulse of blinding light high above the core of the urban front-range, and she told her wife of the vision. She tried to put it out of her head.

She thought the whole process of transition would probably take about two years, and she was right.

Alone, in the winter night, in her hospital bed just south of downtown Denver, no wife and no friends by her side, IVs slowly dripping Vancomycin and narcotics into the vein in her right arm, she watched the news of the invasion on her iPad.

This evil old boomer is there on live TV, bashing her. Literally blaming what she is for his monstrous acts of war:

“Do we really want … it drilled into children in our schools … that there are supposedly genders besides women and men, and [children to be] offered the chance to undergo sex change operations? … We have a different future, our own future.”

She cannot believe what she’s hearing. She kept it inside for so long, and she only just became brave enough to show up as herself. It seemed like maybe the world was becoming more accepting. And then this.

She tried to kill herself in March, but didn’t want to make her family sad. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Months passed, more surgeries, more friends lost. The pandemic started to ease. She went to Europe for work. People smiled at her out in the world. She was only pointed at and called a “boy” by a few people that summer. She drove through Texas to prove to herself that the world wasn’t as scary as she had feared. It mostly went OK.

In August, she survived an attack and carjacking by a man wielding a knife. Physically unharmed, mentally obliterated.

Work was OK, almost all she had left, sometimes.

She went to a concert with her ex-wife, it was fun. Afterwards, she cried for two days about what she had lost. She asked to be put on antidepressants. And then more antidepressants.

At Christmas, she kissed a girl for the first time as herself. Held hands. Both hands. Stared into the eyes of this person and saw a soul staring back at her that she hoped would melt into her own. The two of them becoming one, slowly, over time. Learning from each other, sharing with each other. Adventuring together through the rest of their lives.

They were happy, these two women who had to fight for everything they had, had to fight to be themselves.

It was a sunny, July day in 2024, and they were out on the trail, they loved to run together. They were both pretty slow, but they didn’t care. As they crested the ridge overlooking downtown Denver, they both stopped to catch their breath, and to peer through the leaves. And then a bright light

And then they were gone.

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Another Dream

A few nights ago, I had the first dream that I could remember the details of, in over two years. It was an old 8-millimeter film home movie, silent. The kind that parents used to make of their kids, before video cameras were a thing. The kind of film my dad used to use to capture West African mask performances for his research, and used to film me and my sister when we were young children.

In the home movie, I am wearing a pink-purple-and-white-striped dress. I’m probably about four years old, so this would have been in 1982. I’m playing with my sister. This never happened in “real life”, but I think somehow it happened in a parallel universe.

I had this overwhelming feeling of joy during the dream. A family friend had somehow discovered this old film of me, and showed it to me. They were overjoyed to have found this proof of me as a little girl. I was so happy they had found it.

For a while, I thought the friend who found it was the person who had filmed it. Today, my sister pointed out that the person who would have been filming would have been my dad. The dream was about my dad seeing me as I am. As I was. As a little girl, his older daughter. In some universe, this is true. Maybe he did see me as I am. Maybe, it is our universe after all.

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SECO

You can flip back through the pagеs
And you won’t find I was making any promises
You’re the dеsert, I’m the rain
And we both know I never stay
But still you wanted it

– “Slow Song” by The Knocks and Dragonette

Explosive bolts keep firing in my mind, decoupling the thing I tried to be from the thing I am – in spasms of emotional and physical joy and pain. This is the craziest time I’ve ever experienced in my life. Part of the explosive decoupling is admitting things that I never could believe about myself before. Things I hoped for, things I dreamed to be, but was certain were reserved for people braver than me, or who were lucky enough to be born as cisgender women. I can’t claim that my experience is representative of any other trans experience but my own. It’s important to listen to other types of trans voices, but here’s mine, and I’m going to shout a lot.

Many powerful people in the United States have decided that the most powerless, smallest segment of society – trans kids – are a nice easy target to beat up on and make money off of their victimization. I can’t bear to look at the news these days. Every day, there’s something about state-sponsored violence against trans kids. Why do these a-holes go after kids? I am so fucking mad that society made me *absolutely terrified* to ask my doctor for hormone blockers when I was twelve, in 1990. I would have done it. I almost did. But my brain said, “If you ask, they’ll know. They’ll know that *you’re gay*. And you’re making a permanent change, and are you really a girl? You don’t know! Don’t fuck up your life.” (In 1990, the prospect of being a gay adolescent in the middle of the country was absolutely terrifying. In fact, I had no idea that gay women even existed, and I knew I wasn’t a gay man.)

The violent, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic things that society made me tell myself are exactly the arguments these so-called “representatives” use to destroy the lives of kids and force them to experience the wrong puberty in front of their peers. If I could have stopped my puberty, if someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “Nicole, you can stop this. You *don’t* have to have facial hair, you *don’t* have to have your skull distorted by testosterone, you can *keep* your voice, you can *have boobs*!!!” I would have burst into tears and immediately said “PLEASE do it.”

So, some day, I will write a book about my experience. And I will talk about my experience. And I will try, desperately, for the rest of my life, to convince just one parent at a time that *It’s OK* to let your trans son or trans daughter live their life the way they know that they should. Please stop telling kids that they’re not really trans. Please believe them. Please stop this violence against kids.

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I’ll tell you how an RBMK reactor explodes

“Sex” by Cheat Codes
Do it on the counter, we’ll fuck for hours (let’s talk about sex)
Any way you want it, you can have it
Talk about sex, baby
Do it in the shower, pussy power

“This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush
I should be crying, but I just can’t let it show
I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking
Of all the things I should’ve said
That I never said
All the things we should’ve done
That we never did
All the things I should’ve given
But I didn’t
Oh, darling, make it go
Make it go away

I was holding my breath for a week.

I still acted like I had a dick. I wouldn’t let myself look at my vagina. The packing felt like it was just tucked, I was just in “too long of a tuck” and I was sure the instant the packing was gone, my dick would be back.

The packing came out. Oh my god it was like a clown-car. Just kept going and going and going. And then it was out. And then the catheter was out. And then I peed, with my junk in the configuration it should have been in for 43 years. And it was amazing. I didn’t cry yet. Then the PT person came in, and we dilated. I had a mirror to hold up to my vagina. Seeing it, that was intense.

In the car on the way home from the hospital, I drove. I felt so good. I felt like me, a new me, in a way I had never imagined. Mental barriers that I didn’t know existed came crashing down left and right. Certain behaviors that were “wrong” when I was a boy, I started to realize that they were right, they were default, they were “just how it is for a girl.” Wearing a bikini. Wanting to be seen, wanting guys to want me, wanting to be a mom. I don’t want to be essentialist, but girl let me tell you.

To have these mental loops in your head playing for your entire life, suppressing things, even when you have transitioned, still suppressing things and behaviors. I couldn’t talk like me before. All of a sudden, without effort, I started to be able to talk like me, how I knew I always should have talked. To have that mental bandwidth suddenly freed up by this situation. My mind grasped for an analogy.

The only thing I could see was technicians trying to avert some crisis. Desperately flipping switches to try to save the situation. And they can’t, because some of the switches are too small for their fingers to flip, little dip switches. So they get out the tweezers, but it’s not fast enough. And then in walks the doctor, with a giant flat piece of plastic, and just flips all those switches from “off” to “on” with one motion. And then the day is saved. More than that. A day that has never existed before in the history of the earth now exists for me.

This torture loop of “this thing I’m doing right now is not what a woman would be doing” is gone. I don’t have to think that any more. I don’t have to metathink about the thing that I have to hide any more. This is the biggest gift anyone could ever receive. Is this what it feels like to be a human being? Oh my god. I have been missing out.

I cried so much. This could have happened years ago and I would have been pain-free. Girl, let me tell you that it couldn’t. It took the length of time it needed to take and not a second more or less.

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Innie

If you’ve read this blog, you probably know that I put a lot of personal details out here. There are three reasons for this: One, I think adults probably are used to dealing with pretty tough topics. Two, I hope that by putting a bunch of this out here, it will start to be de-stigmatized. This is normal stuff, human being stuff that all of us go through. Just different stuff for different people. Three, I really do appreciate and need your help, kind of now more than ever.

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That said, if extreme realness isn’t your bag (and I don’t blame you) probably best to stop reading here.

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OK.

If you are still with me, here’s what’s up. On February 8, 2022, I am having “bottom surgery” or “genital reconstruction surgery” or “gender confirmation surgery” or “gender reassignment surgery” the last two names are pretty problematic for a number of reasons. In any case, I am getting my “outie” turned into an “innie”. It turns out that women’s and men’s sex organs are mostly embryologically very similar and/or develop out of the same tissues. So… they are just going to put things back to how they used to be.
The thought of this surgery used to horrify me. I thought they “cut off your penis” or something. It turns out it is quite delicate and they are able to preserve sexual function. You can have the same level of fun afterwards that you had before. Usually more so because you’re not ashamed of your junk.
For my entire life, I have felt ashamed of my body, and this is a significant part of that shame. I am so excited for this to happen, and also quite scared. There are serious complications that can happen, many of them quite gross and painful, and in some very rare cases, death can happen. I hope that I have little to no complication, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take, in order to be me.
I know that not every trans person wants or needs this kind of surgery, and that is completely valid and they should be accepted absolutely as the gender they present as. In my case, this is a life-saving surgery. My mom is coming to Denver for six weeks in order to help me recover. In some ways, this is sort of like a second birth, and I’m so grateful that she can be here.
If I could go back in time to December, 2019 and talk with my pre-pandemic, pre-transition self, and tell that person that this was going to happen, I wouldn’t. They would not be able to deal with it, they were still firmly in the closet. On the other hand, if I could go back in time and tell 8 year old me that I would be able to grow up to be a woman, I think that person would probably break down crying tears of joy, because that is all they wanted. They wouldn’t believe how it could happen, they’d be very sad about how long it would take, and the emotional and physical pain involved.